Skift Originals

The Facebook comments beneath American's updates became a debate about how businesses handle unexpected bumps and self-righteous, frustrated passengers; in other words, the expectations of travelers today.

Air passengers in Asia are fortunate to see such robust competition where they fly. In North America, almost one-fourth of routes see just two airlines vying for passenger allegiance.

As airlines prepare for the next phase, many of them are thinking harder about the uniforms their crews are forced to wear. Qantas decided to go whole-hog into to the affair and tried to use the new designs to signal a modern, sexy appeal for its crew members.

Carnival caved to intense pressure from Washington and its decision to reimburse the government for the Carnival Triumph and Carnival Splendor rescues could serve as a precedent. Carnival and other cruise lines could be getting bills in the mail from the U.S. Treasury for future incidents.

Tourism boards throughout the U.S. will be monitoring Visit California's social media campaign in China to see how it fares. It should be noted, too, that Visit California isn't relying on Brand USA to do its marketing, but is going into China on its own to grab as many visitors as it can.

This is bound to give Burma a big boost in tourism, at least in intent, though the tourism board has been silent on this opportunity for PR. If this was Tourism Australia we would have seen 15 press releases even before the show aired, then 10 more after to show the intent increase and dollar value attached to it.

"Parts Unknown" brings the world to life in a way that CNN has largely ignored on its U.S. channel. Bourdain gets to do what the news programs on CNN can't do: Dive into how real people live without featuring the opinions of ridiculous talking heads.

The absurdity of CorruptTour is precisely the genius of this, and says a lot more about our society than the business itself.